Your Guide To Nostr, The Decentralized Network For Everything

Denostr
5 min readJul 30, 2024

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Contributor:Roger Huang

What is Nostr?

Nostr is (among other things) a decentralized social network run over a series of apps and relays, servers that anybody can run to process communications data. Its main difference is that the focus is on the network rather than the company built on top of it. Traditionally, social media has involved a company allowing people to express themselves and gain followers, but at the cost of giving up some data and being served privacy-invading ads. Nostr flips this dynamic entirely on its head: with one private key, you can access multiple apps/interfaces of your choice.

However, Nostr is not just social media and communications. It’s a different way of structuring the Internet towards one where an anonymous key-pair can help give you new abilities — from transmitting value around the world to accessing and sharing new web services.

Why Nostr?

Several people have cited different reasons for using Nostr. One of the best reasons is that you only need a private key — meaning you don’t have to put down a phone number or other identifier, such as an email, to use it. In countries like China, this can mean much-needed privacy. A private key is like a password — a set of characters you can plug into any Nostr app. Importantly, you don’t need an email or phone number in addition.

This private key can unlock many functions, including building your website, zapping people with Lightning/Bitcoin, and sharing your content with the world.

There isn’t content moderation network-wide, meaning the content is ungated. There isn’t a centralized server admin who can ban you from the network, though individual users can block and mute your content. This makes Nostr, like Bitcoin, censorship-resistant. The network is designed to allow people to read and contribute content.

What clients/apps are the most common?

Many of those using Desktop will use Primal and Iris or Snort.

Different clients are available for various settings. Each client is a different interface to Nostr that you can access with the same private key.

Part of the fun of Nostr is that you can use multiple clients at once and switch back and forth with a single private key — in a world of social media where you have to build your profile and your followers on a single platform, this is quite a revolution.

You can also access an array of apps with that same private key, including social audio apps like Nostr Nests, zap.stream for video streaming, highlighter.com for reading and sharing notes, Wavlake for music, Fountain.fm for podcasts, Chessstr for playing chess and an array of other apps.

Which features are there?

Typically, each client will have slightly different features. However, there are some standards that each will share: the ability to post notes and share notes, boost and quote notes, and search. Primal, for example, has accounts it wants you to follow by default, and zaps on Damus are set up differently.

How do I share my account?

You should be able to get a Public Key from Nostr that can be shared and discoverable on different apps. If you post these on other social networks or your website, people can follow you through there. You can also link to your profile on different apps, such as your Primal profile, so that people can easily click through — or share your more human-readable NIP-05 key.

How do I become verified?

Instead of sharing your public key, you can verify yourself with different services and get a more human-readable way of sharing your profile. This is called the process of being NIP-05 verified. For example, my public key is npub12qxvc5evxqt3rky25mfskywugalx5vnhppfl32cu903cnwpyu0uqkmq8u9 on my main Nostr account — but that’s quite a handful!

After getting NIP-05 verified by using the verified-nostr.com service or a service like that, the key you share with the world will be much shorter and, more importantly, easy for humans to search — which they can do on any client or app that plugs into Nostr. My NIP-05 shorthand is loki@verified-nostr.com; at the end of the article, more NIP-05 accounts are listed.

How do I set up Zaps?

One of the coolest abilities is the ability to receive Zaps and to send them — this represents fractions of a Bitcoin that can add up and constitute real earnings, sent as payments through the Lightning Network. Creators looking to start up and start earning right off the bat for their contributions will find themselves right at home on Nostr. Perhaps the easiest way to set this up is to get a Lightning wallet like Wallet of Satoshi (which unfortunately is not in the United States), which will then give you a Lightning address that you can upload to clients as your “zapping wallet” — allowing you to send and to receive Zaps to different people on Nostr. A more comprehensive guide to setting up zapping wallets is here.

What discussions are there? Who is there to follow?

There are different components of Nostr. The network hosts a lot of Bitcoin content, but there are also different corners, including other languages and geographies represented. There are other parts of Nostr, from photography to pets. Searches on photography, #catstr, #dogstr, #gardening, #artstr, and others will show you the way.

The following prominent Bitcoiners, dissidents, and writers are also on Nostr (this is a somewhat randomized selection, with many more on the platform than space to list):

Are there any downsides?

Right now, there’s the potential for bot activity and spam to be broadcast. Also, content tends to lean towards Bitcoin — Nostr has grown a lot and has new content as we mentioned, but it has stuck to its roots. While you can upload videos and photos, there are size limits: Nostr is set up more for text posts and their smaller data size. Still, the potential for the network to host everything from websites to web services means that Nostr is truly a different way of architecture and thinking about the web.

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Denostr
Denostr

Written by Denostr

Cloud-native Nostr relay implementation that is designed to empower a massive user base on the Nostr relay. Bring on 1 billion people to #Bitcoin ecosystem⚡

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